“I spoiled him . . . I did it!” cried Paul to his own frightened, sorrowful heart. And suddenly he was bestriding the fallen man and stretching out both his hands to ward off the resistless rush of the stallion. “Ashur, you fiend!” he shouted.
The great, shining black body reared itself high above him. He was looking up into a gaping mouth from which the foam flew, and the eyes of Ashur were like the eyes of a dragon, and the mighty forehoofs of Ashur, each like a steel sledge in the hands of a giant, were poised to beat him to a lifeless pulp.
Even then Torridon had time to hear—“Don’t shoot!”—shouted in the great voice of John Brett.
He had time to put the words together, added to an important thought—that his own life, even the added life of great Roger Lincoln, did not amount to the value of the life of Ashur, in the mind of John Brett.
Then the dreadful danger fell—but it swerved past him. The flying mane whipped his face with a hundred small lashes, and then the big horse swept away. He flaunted far off; he was a flash in the distance, with the reins tossing high above his neck.
A wave of people spilled around them. They brushed Paul aside, for of course the question was simply: what had happened to Roger Lincoln?
Torridon sank down beside a stump of a tree that marred the surface of the green pasture. He felt nauseated. When he opened his eyes, the landscape spun violently. When he closed his eyes, it spun with still more fury. And he felt sweat running down his face in rivulets of ice.
Voices sounded in the distance—how far in the distance they were, how hollow. They broke slowly, the sound vibrations rolling up through his body and roaring in his ears. Those were the voices of people thronging around Roger Lincoln.
At length they had picked him up and were departing toward the house. Women were scampering ahead, holding up their skirts so that they could run more rapidly. In the midst of his dizziness Paul looked after them and almost laughed, they were so like waddling ducks.
A shadow crossed him; someone dropped upon knees beside him.
“Were you hurt, Paul?” asked the voice of Nancy Brett.
It jerked one veil of the darkness from his eyes and he looked up at her amazed. She looked anxious and white. Her lips were parted.
“How is Roger Lincoln?” asked Torridon. “I think he broke his neck.”
“I don’t know,” said Nancy. “Do you feel pain, Paul?”
“I seemed to hear it,” muttered Torridon. “I seemed to hear the bone snapping. . . .” He clutched his face with one hand.
“Did Ashur strike you with one of his hoofs?” asked Nancy. “Try to tell me, Paul.”
“He . . . he fell right before me, Nancy!” gasped Torridon.
“I don’t care!” she cried. “I want to know about you. Did he strike you?” She began to pass her hands over his head. Her fingers were trembling.
“I’m all right,” gasped Torridon. “But I feel awfully sick . . . at the stomach.”
“You’d better lie flat. Keep your eyes closed,” she ordered. She took him by the shoulders and pushed him down.
He tried to resist her. “I don’t want to be a baby. They’ll think I fainted,” protested Torridon, but, as he tried to struggle, a shuddering dissolved his strength and he collapsed along the ground.
She sat close beside him. With a handkerchief she wiped the perspiration from his face. Then she began to fan him.
“Put out your hands and take hold of the grass,” she said.
He obeyed.
“Is that better?”
“Yes, Nancy. It’s . . . it’s . . .”
“You don’t have to talk. Just lie still. Just close your eyes.”
He obeyed. Presently he said: “I can feel the strength coming back.”
“You’ll be all right in a moment more. Your color’s a lot better. It’s the touch of the ground that helps. I know.”
“No, it’s coming out of you into me . . . the strength, Nancy, I mean. I think I can sit up now.”
“You’d better not.”
“I don’t want them to see me like this. I’d rather die than have them see me.”
“There. I’ll help.”
She drew him up and put his shoulders against the stump of the tree. He could open his eyes. The landscape no longer was spinning, and in the distance the stallion was grazing.
“Who wanted to shoot? Was it Jack?”
“Yes.”
“Dear old Jack.” Weak tears ran into his eyes. “You’d better go away, Nancy,” he murmured, and he looked down with bent head lest she should see his trembling lip and the water in his eyes.
She said simply: “Uncle John wouldn’t let him shoot. He . . . he thought the horse was more . . . Paul Torridon, you’re crying like a baby!”
“I can’t help it. Nancy, please, please go away.”
She stood up. He heard the rustling of her dress as she left him.
VIII
Afterward he could sit on the stump, although he still was weak in the knees and in the elbows. He wished with all his heart that he had not seen the bright face of Nancy when she spoke to Lincoln that day, because, if he had not, he would not have cared for her opinion so much, but now he felt dreadfully disgraced. He was a man, and he had cried at the thought of the goodness of Jack Brett.
So, clasping his hands together and tearing them apart again, he sat in suffering.
Someone came out from the house toward him. It was Charlie Brett, who of all the young men in the clan had the least good feeling for him, since they lived in the same house. Young men cannot be near one another without forming a great attachment or a profound dislike. There is no such thing as indifference.
First it jumped electrically through the mind of the schoolteacher that Nancy must have told Charlie and that he had come to mock a grown man who cried like a girl.
So Torridon stood up and began to walk up and down. He made himself whistle, although he did not know the tune that puckered his lips.
But when Charlie came up, he said in a respectful tone: “Dad wants to know will you come into the house, Paul? Roger Lincoln wants to talk to you.”
Torridon, in duty bound, went toward the house, and Charlie went beside him, although at a little distance, for he kept his head turned toward Torridon and watched him with an intensity of awe, like a child viewing a strange monster in a cage.
Torridon was more ill at ease than ever when he came into the house. He knew that many of the methods of John Brett were terrible. Now he might choose to shame him before the entire household. He was convinced something dreadful would happen when he found that almost the whole clan was gathered in the big central room of the house. There was Roger Lincoln, reclining in John Brett’s own chair, and John Brett stood behind him, looking more fierce, more sage, more patriarchal than ever before.
When Torridon came in with his light step, in place of the universal indifference that usually greeted him, he found that all heads turned suddenly toward him, and all eyes remained fixed upon him.
They were all waiting.
He halted near the door and waited, too tense and white, praying that the trembling in his heart might stop. But it did not stop. It grew greater. There was not even a whisper of sound. All stared at him except Roger Lincoln, who was looking down at the floor, his long hands folded in his lap.
Paul glanced around him. Yonder was Nancy Brett—the traitor who had told of his weakness. He thought at first that her faint smile was mockery, now, but then he saw that her eyes were big and tender.
Roger Lincoln looked up. He held out his hand. His handsome face lighted with a smile.
Irresistibly drawn, Torridon went up to him.
His fingers were taken in that strong and gentle clasp.